Interestingly as an aside – shortly after writing this book, the author decided to leave her City life and move to a small cottage in the Suffolk countryside where this book was set. Vom Nachwort der Autorin, wie sie zu ihrem Roman angeregt wurde, sollte man sich überraschen lassen und sich vor Spoilern hüten. The autumn of 1933 is the most beautiful Edie Mather can remember. But in the fields and villages around her beloved Wych Farm the Great War still casts a shadow over a community impoverished by economic depression, and threatened by change. Change, too, is coming to Edie, who at fourteen must soon face the unsettling pressures of adulthood. Constance FitzAllen arrives from London to document fading rural traditions and beliefs, urging all who will listen to resist progress and return to the old ways — but some wonder whether there might be more to the glamorous older woman than meets the eye. As harvest approaches and the future of Wych Farm itself grows uncertain, Edie must somehow find a way to trust her instincts and save herself from disaster. Where did you get your text, Amergin? It's longer than the sets I've seen, though Come ye rout is probably a mis-hearing of Come out from somewhere along the line.

What a brilliant and timely novel All Among The Barley is. Deeply evocative of a historical moment - rural England between the wars, before mechanisation - it is also, unmistakably, about questions that press hard on us now, above all the dangers of nationalism, and how easily a love of place can be corrupted into something dark and exclusionary. This is an important book by a writer of great gifts' - Robert Macfarlane In all three the first lines are not shown repeated, though the copy from Such has a footnote to repeat them. The texts are identical to the 1867/1871 text above, The narrator of All Among the Barley is Edie Mather, a fourteen year old girl living on a Suffolk farm in the 1930s. In this place and at this time she is considered to be on the brink of womanhood – she has already left school – despite her teacher’s entreaties that she continue her education. Edie lives at Wych Farm with her parents, grandfather, and older brother – her sister has married and left home, there are a couple of farm workers too who have been with the family for years. The shadow of the Great War still hangs over the farm and its inhabitants, and the Great Depression has affected them and the wider community in many ways. Running through the story is that age old juxtaposition of the preservation of tradition with the progress brought by new practices. The whole novel is something of a love letter to those long gone times, a reminder of a way of life, a slower, harder time, when people still carried the most unbearable losses with them. Harrison’s descriptions of landscape and the natural world are gorgeous, she clearly has a wonderful affinity with the world around her and the land that will have changed little in ninety years.What I find interesting about this is that the Hunter's Moon is not in September (as the words say) but in October.

I've finally managed to have a look at Judith Barger's Elizabeth Stirling and the Musical Life of Female Organists in Nineteenth-Century England (thanks Google books). It devotes a large section to the song (as Stirling's most well-known) which tells us some things about the origin of the song. There are two sheet music versions of the song at the Library of Congress in the Music For The Nation: American Sheet Music collection: An incredible evocation of one particular corner of rural England in the 1930s ... with this novel she's done what I've long suspected she would: she's written a masterpiece (Jon McGregor, author of 'Reservoir 13') Call Number: M2.3.U6A44 Digital Id: sm1874 10936 urn:hdl:loc.music/sm1874.10936 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.music/sm1874.10936

Reviews

A tale of rural Suffolk in the 1930s which is both loving in its detail, yet also clear-sighted enough to see the pitfalls of revering the land in ways that can lead down dangerous paths, towards blood and soil ideology.' - Tracey Thorn The completeness of Harrison’s maps indicated that they had been an integral part of the novel’s creation. She inhabits the landscape intimately, like her characters, who seem to have emerged straight from it as readily and naturally as the flints they clear from the soil each year.” All of these presumably to encourage beer rather than whiskey, as the lesser of two evils! The remainder of the text is the same.